- Nicole Johnsey Burke advises against using wood mulch in vegetable gardens, distinguishing these from other garden types where mulch might be more commonly used.
- Wood mulch is criticized for not being fully decomposed, which leads to a competitive nitrogen absorption process with the growing plants, potentially hindering their development.
- Mulch provides a conducive environment for pests, creating hiding and breeding grounds for insects that can damage vegetable plants.
- Instead of using mulch, Nicole promotes the intensive planting of every available space in the garden with a mix of plant sizes, thereby maximizing the productive use of space and reducing the need for mulch.
- She contends that wood mulch is unnecessary and counterproductive in vegetable gardens due to its nutrient competition, pest attraction, and waste of valuable planting space.
Video source: Gardenary / Youtube
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I think 80 000 views with only 57 likes says it all…
Quite long winded.
hi i usually plant on my roof but my back garden is 35 ft x 12 ft. the problem is that i only gets sun in the summer months, so my question is what vegetables can i grow. summer and winter. thank you
I have a question that really isn’t about garden but a crape Myrtle tree if you can help. I get ants around the base do you know what to do to not have them?
Thats why you make agreements with the power companies and county government responsible for trimming around power lines in your LOCAL area. They usually send all that through a chipper, which mulches the trimmings. If they know they can dump the truckloads for free. They even pile it nicely usually. Native trimmings will make better "mulch" or eventually compost. Please look into no till gardening or regenerative farming. You'll find NATIVE TREE TRIMMING MULCH is highly sought after commodity. It slso has something to do with balancing carbon when using the trimmings in your compost. Let nature work with you and stop working against it.
FAKE NEWS !…nitrogen tie up from wood chips is negligible if its only top dressed..if thats all it takes to hurt your garden then your soil is dead and you have bigger problems
The only thing you need to keep in mind is to not incorporate the wood whips into your soil. That’s the only way wood chips will pull nitrogen from the soil. I have used wood chips for the past 10 years in pathways throughout my garden. I don’t think many experienced gardeners are actually covering their entire vegetable bed with wood chips as a mulch. Their benefits far outweigh any negatives.
That made a lot of sense
So repetitive. Everything is mentioned 10x. Love what you do though.
Lol…
Do you use wood chips in garden pathways? And what do you think about Hugo culture?
Scientists have already proven that woodchips dont pull nitrogen from the rooting zone just fyi. Kind of common sense when you really think about it. Also if you live somewhere hot and dry, good luck not mulching and having anything grow without watering 2x a day.
– not going to even touch on the "destructurizing itself" ridiculous statement lol.
Only thing clear is that you are not qualified to be saying anything about gardening
Go back to school and get a Horticultural science degree
I think Paul Gautschi and his back to eden gardening techniques would highly disagree, as do I. Mulch is amazing for gardens. Obviously you need to plant in finished soil and not directly into mulch while that mulch breaks down.
I gave up after 2 seconds
Couldn’t listen to it.
Wonderful, thank you. I have removed the bark. It was looking nice 😂. Finally I had an answer
For any new gardeners that come across this video, take the woman’s “advice” with a grain of salt. I personally only made it to 4:30 because she does talk out of her butt a little bit.
For everyone feeling overwhelmed, fear not! Gardening is not complicated at all. Humanity has been doing it since God created Adam and Eve and placed them in a garden. You can garden too!
Simply take a look at how nature itself gardens. Nature keeps the ground constantly covered – whether that be in mulch, crops, trees, or even weeds. The ground wants to be covered.
Nature does everything in its appropriate season. It heavily mulches in the fall by having plants lose their foliage and trees shed their leaves. That mulch sits on the ground to start decomposing over winter. In the spring, when the ground warms and the mulch layer is getting thin, seeds sprout and plants begin growing in order to maintain the covering on the ground. The plants then grow all summer and produce the foliage, herbs, flowers, fruits, or vegetables according to its kind. In the fall, it prepares itself for winter and again nature mulches the ground.
A lot of people live in cities and suburbs where there is little to no nature around them. That is why humans mulch gardens. Use whatever organic matter you have access to. If you are surrounded by lots of grass lawns, mulch with grass clippings. If you have abundant access to trees, use leaves. If you have access to straw, use straw. I personally have access to loads of free arborist woodchips and all my garden beds are mulched with woodchip. My crops grow like weeds.
If you are surrounded by nothing but concrete, get creative. Collect food scraps from restaurants and compost them and mulch with the compost. You don’t have to spend a whole lot of money; use whatever resources are available to you.
I do two types of compost. 1) hot compost, for annuals…
2) twigs, logs, branches are long slow compost for trees and perennial plants.
I'm trying to get into this more intensive style of planting because of limited growing space. Living mulch makes a lot of sense.
What about dead leaves? My house is surrounded by large oak trees that drop a lot of leaves in the fall, and I've been vacuuming them and using them as mulch.
Thank you. That is the way my parents gardened. I totally agree with no mulch.
if the wood shavings or chunks get into the soil it steals nitrogen to decomp. Plants start going yellow. That was my experience. Not using that here either
Lady , you are WRONG . As long as you don't incorporate wood chips INTO your
garden soil and just leave them on the surface , very little nitrogen is pulled from your soil.
I think I resonate with your gardening skills. I believe you.
The topic should be stop using 'wood' mulch. I use wheat straw or chop-n-drop plant leaves.
100% true
I really like the method of intensive planting and it makes perfect sense, but I grow in containers; can intensive planting be done in containers?
Makes goodsense. I ama beginnerone lerson bousehold.
I’m in the desert! Palm Springs area. I don’t like wood chips as they are in the way and gives me splinters! Maybe I’ll try straw.